


Oh restless heart, brought me to my knees

by do_not_fly



Category: Gossip Girl
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-07
Updated: 2015-10-07
Packaged: 2018-04-25 06:54:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4950808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/do_not_fly/pseuds/do_not_fly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Well, I don’t like you much. But I don’t hate you either.” Set in 1920s England, Blair and Nate are siblings, and Dan is the angsty son of their house maid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oh restless heart, brought me to my knees

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Empty_Scribbles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Empty_Scribbles/gifts).



> Empty_Scribbles wanted an Atonement AU, but I couldn't do a tragic plot so this happened. I hope you like it though. Cheer!

 

Dan is eight and he finds himself in the middle of a weekend party for the first time in his little life.

Harold pushes him towards the youngest crowd in the room, “You can join Nate and Blair over there,” he says gently before leaving him to go entertain an acquaintance.

Dan stands awkwardly alone in a lavish drawing room. A live band is playing vibrant tunes of jazz near the Gothic fireplace. The guests all dress in finely tailored suits and elegant frocks, the kind of garments he has only seen on television. Dancing and chatting people flits by him like he’s not really there. He never feels so out of place, craving the familiar comfort of his own shabby room more and more after every seconds passes.

“You haven’t met my sister.”

Nate isn’t asking. He doesn’t wait for an answer, doesn’t hear Dan’s open protest about unfinished school works waiting at home (and his quiet, non-existent sense of belonging)—simply drags him by the wrist toward a group of giggling young girls, about his age. Their focuses are on her, lightly twirling around like a ballerina to show off better her fashionable outfit—a sleeveless dress, in a very bold shade of green; waistline drops at her hip and flares out in a fluffy tiered skirt; tiny golden embroidered flowers adorn her arms and peek out between her brown curls. The girl looks like a forest fairy doll.

“Papa ordered from Paris,” she says, bursting with pride.

Dan rolls his eyes at that—right when she turns his way. Her eyes catches his—gleaming challenges—for a split second. Even from afar, they stand out fiercely against her pale skin.

Nate calls out to her. “Blair, come meet Dan?” She wrinkles her nose, disapproving of his lack of introduction etiquette—a shadow of a fault, compared to his shiny smile.

There’s an awkward moment when the crowd of idolizing girls shifts to Nate’s side; their full attention now rests on him. He takes no notice of it, his easy charm radiating. Blair pouts at them, not unlike a little girl alone in the playground.

She gives Dan an once-over so thoroughly it makes him squirm a little. Up-close, she looks even more like a doll, it’s unthinkable that she still manages to appear intimidating.

Nate flashes Blair a cheery smile, looking peculiarly like their father. “Dan is Alison’s son.”

“So you’re Dan Humphrey.” Her eyes go suddenly cold. She doesn’t try to hide her displeasure as she sneers at him. “My father’s charity work.”

His jaw tenses up. “I didn’t ask to be here with a bunch of spoiled brats.” He feels the familiar anger simmering where it hides.

Blair’s lips turn into a thin line. With a tone carefully combined out of cruelty and politeness, she delivers, “If you hadn’t come dressing like _that_ , perhaps you would’ve been able to _pretend_ like you belonged here.”

And she struts away, like she hasn’t just cut a person to shreds.

 

-

 

His resentment is an old one. That his mother works as a house maid. That his father just decided one day he had enough gardening for a lifetime and simply left—like they don’t matter. That the Waldorf was charitable enough to give Alison a job there. That he was unwillingly thrown in the mix of overprivileged toffs and wannabe aristocrats. That Harold has generously paid for his education, and ever treats him with so much kindness—like a son. His goodwill leaves Dan feeling pitiful and bitter about his own father.

 

-

 

Alison became the Waldorf’s cleaner the week after Rufus walked away. It was a thing to be grateful for life. If times were hard for anyone in the working class, it was terrible for the women. And with Dan so little, she couldn’t possibly get a factory jobs anywhere. So instead of dwelling on wasted life and marital mistakes, she has dedicated herself to him, nurtured him with a sort of quiet, practical affection. They lean on each other for hope and comfort. Dan doesn’t even remember when it is that he started to keep to himself for fear of being a burden.

 

-

 

“Nate dear, I really question how you spend your time.” Blair sighs as she lifts her eyes from the book in her lap to question her brother.

Sitting in Dan’s worn-out armchair, she looks like a badly disguised princess—her casual look still a stark contrast to the disheveled surroundings. The three of them are not enjoying the pleasure of his childhood bedroom so much as Nate is sharing with Dan his newly acquired cigarettes, and Blair is complaining about it.

“Why are you even here, Blair?” Dan can’t help his irritation. He doesn’t know why they keep being in the presence of each other.

“I’m here for my brother. He’s in desperate need of good company to balance out yours,” she says, matter-of-factly.

“You can’t be content to moon over frilly dresses with your friends?” He’s seen her surreptitiously daydreaming after pictures of flapper girls in magazine all the times. At the moment, she is wearing one of the subtler versions of the trendy dresses.

“What’s wrong with a frilly dress? Admit it, you only look down on it because it’s girly.” She claps her book closed in a huff. Her eyes run up and down his body pointedly. “What do you even know about fashion? You dress like a rumpled pignut.”

Dan looks down at his shirt, frowns. It’s not even _that_ rumpled.

Nate laughs out into puffs of smoke from where he’s been sitting quietly.

“Such lady-like language. I’m gonna tell on you, Blair.” He wiggles his brow mischievously.

“Please, you do that and I’ll tell mother about _that thing_ you did with Penelope,” she insinuates, lips curls up in a wicked smile.

“You evil little sis—” Nate’s face turns pale. Dan chuckles to himself—Blair Waldorf, the epitome of annoying little sister.

“You’re just too easy.” Blair opens her book again, looking a tad too smug.

“You’re indeed evil though,” Dan interjects.

“You’re a nitwit.”

“Twat.”

 

-

 

“She’s just lonely.” Later, Nate tells him. “Father’s never home now. Blair always adores him.”

 _Well, my father is never home too_ , he wants to say. But he never speaks about Rufus, not even with his mother. Some day, they will stop torturing themselves with _whys_ and _hows_ , and _what-ifs_. Living where they are, when they are—he reminds himself—no one is in any position to fret about absent fathers. After the war, many fathers are never home, _forever gone_.

 

-

 

Dan sits for an exam and wins his scholarship to the local grammar. Alison silently wipes a tear, looks at him with a newfound hope. Just maybe, his effort will bring him a better set of outcomes? Harold takes the first step in an enduring patronage by paying for the uniform and textbooks. When he's alone with his thoughts, Dan doesn’t ask himself whether it is his good fortune that Rufus left.

 

-

 

For a while, he has made a habit of hiding among tree branches, scribbling away in his tattered notebook. He writes about little boys who get dropped in the woods, who don’t belong anywhere, who fight alone against the world... He wonders if he writes it down enough times, it will start making sense to him somehow.

 

-

 

Dan has discovered one particular oak tree, tall with trunk not too difficult to climb and comfortable seats behind layers of leafy coverage. It isn’t too far deep in the woods—from it he can still see the distance to the Waldorf house and his home in the opposite direction—but it feels secluded enough.

Blair finds him there.

Technically, he finds her—storming from the house like a fiery hurricane. She stops near the tree he is sitting in, her posture is tense beyond belief. When she looks his way, he realizes with a start that she’s been crying—her face blotchy red, her eyes brimming with unshed tears.

She jumps when she sees him.

“ _Bloody hell_ —”

He finds himself amused at her unusual choice of words.

“Blair Waldorf curses like a sailor.” Putting his notebook away in is pocket, he jumps down to where she’s standing. “I’m amazed.”

“Must you be such a creep?” She swats at his arm, annoyed. “I was almost scared to death.”

“I’m sorry.” Dan huffs, weirdly conscious of the ghost of her touch on his skin. “You appeared so sad,” he says, putting up an air of faux-pity. “I was just enjoying it a little.”

A gust of laughter rushes out of him when he sees her reaction. She’s glaring at him with murderous intent so he—wisely—ducks his head and raises his hands as a sign of peace. She certainly changes her mood quickly. One minute ago, she looks like she’s about to break; now she is about to break his neck. Nevertheless, it pleases him that she doesn’t seem too unhappy anymore.

“What’s wrong?” he asks softly.

“As if I would give you a chance to glow.” She scoffs.

“Well, I don’t like you much. But I don’t hate you either.”

“Why I’m so grateful,” She says dryly and eyes him curiously. “Why was you climbing a tree?”

“I—” Dan scratches the back of his head “—I was just writing.” He smiles bashfully. “This tree is my secret hiding place.”

She looks intrigued and baffled all at once. “What do _you_ have to hid from?”

Blair moves to inspect the tree trunk with apparent interest. He think he detects a faint hint of wistful sentiment under her dark lashes.

“Well, spoiled rich girls with mean tongues, for starters,” he says breezily.

“Too bad I’m here then.” She rolls her eyes, but he catches a glimmer of a smile tugging at her lips.

“What are you hiding from, Blair?”

“I’m not hiding.” She pouts indignantly. But when he shoots her a skeptical look, she lets out a huff. “I’m just—”

She looks up at the green canopy above their head, says with a heavy sigh, “—tired.”

 

-

 

Nate has gone to boarding school.

Harold is away more than he is at home.

Eleanor is too demanding to be a source of comfort.

Blair doesn’t say it, but he knows she is lonely.

On her idle days when she’s released from classes of elocution, comportment, needlework, or various other things a lady is supposed to master, he finds her sitting in a tree lost in her books.

“I should’ve known you’d take over my tree.”

“I don’t think you can claim a tree.” She huffs, a tiny smile pulls up the corners of her lips. “Besides, sharing makes for a better person.”

“Are you really Blair Waldorf?” He narrow his eyes playfully.

She mirrors his gesture, says in a deadpan tone. “Very funny.”

As he climbs up his (her? their?) tree, he wonders since when Blair Waldorf and climbing trees became phrases that were related. Since when he has stopped tolerating her company and started to _enjoy_ it.

 

-

 

Dan’s preparing to go to Cambridge in the fall. Forever the patron, Harold has discussed future arrangements with him and promised to pay for his tuition. To relieve some of the burden of gratitude, Dan takes to help the Waldorf with gardening work. He tries not to think about the similarity to his father’s old job, and what it means. It turns out, weeding and trimming are surprisingly calming.

 

-

 

He is taking one of his breaks on the wooden veranda when the sound of her voice catches his attention.

“Tell me why I can’t go visit him, mother?” Blair’s hands ball into fists at her sides; her eyes half pleading, half demanding.

“You need to stop behaving like an ill-mannered child. Your father has works to do,” Eleanor only says. Her tone is stern and leaves no room for arguments.

When she walks pass Dan, the woman gives him a perfunctory nod of acknowledgment, and one of her looks—the type that makes a person feel like all of his bad thoughts and insecurities are bare, found out, exposed. Blair has told him once, that her mother had mastered the way the world functions and had no patience for anyone who questions it. _Even her daughter,_ she didn’t say.

He goes to look for Blair at their tree. For a long stretch of time, they just sit near each other in silent companionship.

“Do you think of him?” She asks so softly, it startles him. She doesn’t say his name but he knows whom she means—Dan thinks everything about him traces back to Rufus somehow.

“I try not to.” His own honesty is surprising. “I have my picks. On a good day, he died in the great war. Otherwise, he’s living his dream life somewhere.”

Off her inquiring look, he continues lightly.

“He left when I was so little, I don’t remember anything much about him. I have this memory—one time, I fell on my face and cried. He picked me up, put me on his shoulder. I’m not sure if it’s a real memory or I just dreamed it up.”

“You miss him,” she says, understanding. The simplicity of it floors him. Has he never realized it—never admitted it to himself? He thought it was easier to just resent his father than to miss him. It’s no wonder that Blair is the person to point it out to him. He suspects she probably knows what it feels to love and hate in equal parts.

“I guess I do,” he says it—out loud, feeling an invisible weight lifted from his chest. Slightly abashed, he confesses, “I used to be jealous of you and Nate when Harold’s around.”

Blair’s eyes drop to her hands in her lap. She purses her lips so hard, they turn into a white line.

“Papa has a lover—” she says at last—so quietly, he almost doesn’t hear her. She takes in a deep shaky breath.

“Blair,” He doesn't know what to say to her, words escaped him through a crack in his head.

“He can’t leave and he can’t stay either.” She looks anywhere but his direction. “And everyone acts like everything is perfect.”

Dan tries in vain to catch her gaze. Finally, she turns her head to him—her eyes, two wells of still water.

“I’m just so sick of all this pretending.” Her face crumbles as she desperately tries to hold herself together.

Dan questions if the urge to pull her into his arms is a proper one. He hesitates for a moment and decides to reach out and take her hand in his. To his surprise—and relief— Blair makes no attempts to pull it back. He feels the slight tremble in her small hand, wishing that he could do something—anything—to make it stop.

 

-

 

In his notebook, Dan starts a story about children who grow up in boxes, enclosed in their own solitude, bounded by their unwieldy expectations and fears of looming disappointments. He tries to come up with a happy ending for them. One where they aren't so lost and sad anymore.

 

-

 

“What is _that_?”

—is her first reaction when she sees what he has brought in front of her.

“First time seeing a bicycle, Waldorf?” Dan chuckles lightly.

“You cannot be expecting me to ride on _that_?” she stares at him, incredulous.

 _Blackmail_ is showing at the cinema; Dan has figured that an Alfred Hitchcock ‘talkie’ would cheer her up.

“Well, you can’t drive your own car. You don’t take buses. And it’s a tad bit far for–” his eyes drops to her feet “—those shoes.”

Blair widens her eyes indignantly. Today she pairs red kitten heels with her summer dress—cream color and thin straps, a simple one that makes her look relaxing and free.

“Me taking the bus would be less of a sight then me sitting on this heap of rusty metal.” She crosses her arm and huffs. “And you can’t drive either. I’d rather wait for Hardman’s leg to heal.”

“And miss it when it stops showing? Naaa!”

“I can’t believe my life has come to this,” Blair laments, her head shakes in disbelief. “I think I've hung around with Dan Humphrey for too long.”

“Don’t worry, no good men will think Blair Waldorf rides a bicycle, especially, wearing this.” Dan grins and put his tweed cap on her head. She grimaces as her hands reaches up to touch it, cringing at the material. There must be something wrong with him because he finds that impossibly adorable.

He spreads a blanket over the back saddle, assures her, “This will keep your clothes safe and sound.”

“Only because I want to see the film, you know” She wrinkles her nose. Long summer days has left a faint dust of freckles across it, along her shoulders, and collarbones... He swallows hard and averts his gaze like it’s burning.

“Of course, Hitchcock.” He nods stiffly, feeling flushed.

“Thank you, Humphrey.” Blair starts to fidget with her bracelet. “I know you’d rather hide away from civilization.” She gives him a smile, soft and pretty.

Dan tries and fails to stop a grin from stretching across his face. He realizes— with some amount of apprehension—that he cares about her happiness a little too much for his own comfort. He just knows it will spell trouble.

“Come on, or we’ll be late. You can’t blame me if that happens.” Dan gets on the bicycle and holds out a hand for her.

“Oh, I’ll blame you. Remind me, how fast does this thing go?” Blair gingerly climbs on the back seat, settles with both her legs on one side and grabs a fistful of Dan’s vest for security.

“Faster than my legs and yours alone, I’m sure,” he answers her, stepping on the pedal.

Blair let out a high-pitched yelp, arms cling to his waist.

“Humphrey, I will haunt you for _life_ if you kill me in a freak bicycle accident!” She pokes his back, for good measure.

He throws his head back and laugh without reservation, thinks to himself; _trouble be damned._

 

 

 


End file.
